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STATUE OF OLIVER P. MORTON, 

ERECTED IN STATUARY HALL, 
UNITED STATES CAPITOL. 



SPEECH 



HON. ABRAHAM L BRICK, 

OF INDIANA, 

IN THE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

ON ITS ACCEPTANCE, 

APRIL 14:, 1900. 



"He spoke the message of his birth, and in the gloom of time it has become a 
star, that gleams and shines on the crowds of countless waves that ebb and flow 
in human life and round about the Ship of State." 



WASHINGTON. 



1900. 
4341 -5^ v.- 




.63 



Cong. Record Of f.^ 
10 Ja.' 01 



SPEECH 

OF 

HON. ABRAHAM L. BRICK. 



The House having under consideration the following resolution: 
" Resolved by the Senate ithe House of Representatives concurring). That the 
statue of Oliver P. Morton presented by the State of Indiana, to be placed in 
Statuary Hall, is accepted in the name of the United States: and that the 
thanks of Congress be tendered the State for the contribution of the statue 
of one of the most eminent citizens and illustrious statesmen of the Republic. 
" Second. That a copy of these resolutions, suitably engrossed and duly 
authentiQated, be transmitted to the governor of the State of Indiana" — 

Mr. STEELE said: 

Mr. Speaker: In 1864, soon after the completion of the present 
Hall of the House of Representatives, a law was enacted by Con- 
gress which contained the following provision: 

And the President is authorized to invite all the States to provide and 
furnish statues, in marble or bronze, not exceeding two in number for each 
State, of deceased persons who have been citizens thereof and illustrious for 
their historic renown or for distinguished civil or military services, such as 
each State may deem to be worthy of this national commemoration ; and when 
so furnished the same shall be placed in the old Hall of the House of Repre- 
sentatives in the Capitol of the United States, which is set apart, or so much 
thereof, as may be necessary, for the purpose herein indicated. 

In compliance with this resolution we are about to accept, as a 
gift from the State of Indiana, a statue of her illustrious son, Oliver 
P: Morton. 

Mr. BRICK was recognized. 

Mr. BRICK. Mr. Speaker, a great State, renowned in him, 
to-day answers to the call of the United States, and presents to the 
whole country he served so well, the statue of Oliver P. Morton, 
placed in her national hall of heroes, there to be reverently guarded 
so long as adamant endures and memory wakes. 

The man who was known as the great war governor of Indiana, 
peerless among all the magistrates of those mighty days, requires 
no other tribute than the simple statement of that giant fact. 

And this monument need not be erected for his sake; but we 
plant it there for his country's sake. 

4341 3 



The noblest sentiment of any land is the debt it pays, in its 
richest excess of tendereet memory, bestowed on honored dead. 

How poor and desolate this world would be without its monu- 
mental grave, without the quickening conscience of its remem- 
bered great! 

And so to-day, after more than twenty years of days, with cumu- 
lative tense, the public grief bows homage to his name and lays 
upon his tomb a laurel wreath of glory. 

Greatness lies in nobility of mind and goodness of heart, as well 
as in illustrious deeds. 

And Oliver P. Morton lived the brief day that nature spares to 
man, but that day of his was fuller filled with deeds than hours, 
with palpitating thoughts than dial marks. 

His name comes down to us radiant with a land redeemed, jew- 
eled with the joj's of hope, and shining bright and clear in a people 
reunited, where every man reveres the flag and not one wears a 
manacle. 

This is a generation when kings and conquerors die and naught 
remains but speechless du&t; the end of all is six feet of earth— so 
spoke Napoleon. 

A day when love of man and country confers a prouder name, 
a grander title than all the glory found in wars grim pageantry 
of crimsoned conquest. 

A day when earth's immortal crown is placed on heads that 
think — whose proudest epaulets of honor adorn the arm that 
works — whose most immemorial badge of heraldry reclines on 
breasts where hearts have felt. 

Napoleon spoke better than he knew — wiser than he thought. 

To the man who wears the borrowed plumes of ancestry oi 
sports the fading livery of favoritism, the grave ends all. 

To the warrior whose sordid ambition may have changed the 
map of nations, to the soldier whose glory clings round the crown 
of a destroyer, "the end of all is six feet of earth." 

But to the patriot, to the constructor, to the empire builder, to 
one who learned from mother's lips and father's face and breathed 
it in from the very air of native soil that his first and last duty 
was to his country; that to live for her is honor and to die for her 
is glory— to such a man as Oliver P. Morton- for him to die was 
to just begin to live. 

4341 



No widows or orphans were made for him, no tears were shed 
for his glory. 

But his grave is watered by the dews of gratitude and lighted 
by the stars of a nations love. 

History is like the sibyl; she reveals her secrets leaf by leaf. 
Time and events solve what no prophet dare forecast. 

The price of eminence is a cross and a crown. 

To be great is to be maligned, to be misunderstood, to live 
amidst the curses of the present, and to die in the blessings of the 
future. 

Living, he was a rival; dead, a benefactor. 

The grave and mother earth cleanses all. 

The man they called a demagogue is now known as a patriot. 
He whom they called a tyrant, history tells us was a man hurri- 
cane battling for the life of a nation— his country — the only true 
Republic that ever lived. 

The man they thought a politician, the sage of events reveals to 
have been an inspired statesman with a soul and a message. 

He delivered that message, and in the realm of time it has be- 
come a star that gleams and shines on the crowds of countless 
waves that ebb and flow in human life and round about the Ship 
of State. 

Oliver Perry Morton was born of rugged mold, fresh from the 
soil, a native Indianian. Sooner or later the stock of all great 
men must be rejuvenated from the soil. 

He came from the Middle West at a time when mighty, elemen- 
tal forces were evolving within her. 

She had not the proud heritage of New York; neither did she 
possess the polish of Boston; but she did have the smoke and fire 
and dust out of which worlds are made and swing into orbit. 

And it was from such soil and in this air and sky in which he 
grew. 

In the very heart of that land where in hi? day the battle of 
ages was begun, he awoke to the contest like a sleeping giant. 

He continued that contest, a great blast furnace, with the 
brain of a Jove, with the courage of a Titan, and the heart of a 
mother, until that afternoon when he kissed his wife and sons to 
say, "I am worn out." These were his last words. 

But the task was finished, and Morton's life work was over. 

4341 



He was the foremost man in all the nation to maintain the 
Union. He lived long enough to perpetuate for all time the re- 
sults of the war. 

This was enough for one man to do. 

He is Indiana's greatest son. 

Who shall say to what degree he is great among the nation's 
heroes? There are no degrees in masterpieces. 

There is one thing we know— that in one way and another they 
have all reached those sublime heights of human greatness to 
which God descends and man ascends. 

There he will remain. 

His were the days of rock and bronze, of decks wet with blood 
and men black with trials. 

Days of crises and ominous hope for human liberty. 

Days filled with the dread music of preparation and impending 
suspense— music mingled with the muttered roll of thunders and 
the crash of empire. 

They demanded a Colossus, and in Oliver P. Morton was found 
a Thor. 

A nation was to be saved , and there was no time for argument. 
No disturbing doubt of vacillating ethics swerved his mind when 
the issues were so vast and the field a kingdom. 

Guns were to be bought, an army to be raised, and men to be 
cared for. 

He was first of all the Union to telegraph Lincoln: "On be- 
half of the State of Indiana. I tender to you for the defense of the 
nation ten thousand men. " 

That was the message of his birth. He filled it with two hun- 
dred thousand men and all the days and hours of his life. 

It was a message of blood and iron. 

To-day it stands a granite statue— an imperishable name. 

From that moment he became a god of war, and the arm he 
raised remained aloft till it nerveless fell in death, •' worn out " 
in his country's cause. 

He brooked no opposition, he spurned all compromise. 

He had but one passion, his country; but one principle, its sal- 
vation, now and forever. 

To him finnness was mercy, to bend a crime. 

4341 



The Union was more sacred than even human blood, than hia 
own life. 

And so he lived, a giant oak, but around his rugged breast 
there twined all the vines and flowers of manlj' love, the love of 
home and country, of wife and child and friend. 

We will not trespass here on old remembered days of long ago, 
when love and joy had mingled into wedded bliss upon the 
happy hearth of home, nor tell of days when hand in hand they 
wandered down the shadowy slope in self-forgetting rapture. 

There is a love too great for utterance, a grief too strong for 
sentiment. 

No soldier ever had a truer friend, no nation a better soldier. 

When they left him for the battlefield his hand clasped every 

^mans — a brother; as they fought in the carnage of conflict, with 

hearts of oak and nerves of steel, he was their comrade, and in 

the night of pain and death his ministering hand was always 

there, with tearful eye— their nurse and friend. 

And then, when over all the blue and the gray, the smoke rolled 
away forever, he was the good father of every widow and orphan; 
he kept green the graves of the dead, and gave honor and relief 
to the living. 

As some one said, in many a humble home where his picture 
was suspended by the side of the young soldier fallen, the mes- 
sage that the "good governor*' had ceased to live would bring 
sadness as if death had again broken that family circle and once 
more had chilled the fires of the family hearthstone. 

There came to the executive office at Indianapolis two old 
Quaker friends of Governor Morton, to get from his own lips 
news from the front. When they heard his words, and looked 
into that great, solemn countenance saddened by the love of 
menaced liberty, and tear-stained by the agony of the boys in 
blue, the eldest one, a man of seventy years or more, reverently 
placed his hands on Morton's head, and with simple pathos invoked 
God"s providence with "May God bless you. Governor Morton." 

Many a soldier has echoed that prayer; the nation has reiter- 
ated it. 

And, Mr. Speaker, it must be so; God has blessed you. Gov- 
ernor Morton. [Applause.] 

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
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